The Realist and the Surrealist

By

Richard B. Woodward

April 3, 2013 5:00 p.m. ET

Los Angeles

American museums have devoted a lot of wall space since the millennium to Japanese post-World War II photography. A re-evaluation of artists from this camera-mad culture has been welcome, if overdue. Traveling retrospectives on Daido Moriyama and Shōmei Tōmatsu in the past decade introduced U.S. audiences to the full spectrum of work by a pair of shape-shifting figures. The medium's significance for many 1960s movements can no longer be ignored after the New York exhibitions "Tokyo 1955-1970: A New...